


The Merciless One

by Montresor



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Except when he's Caster, Gen, Gilles is not a Heroic Spirit in this one, Jeanne Alter wins AU, One Shot, some depiction of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15073493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Montresor/pseuds/Montresor
Summary: "The Dragon Witch shall always remember, at the end of glory, a knight was hurt, defeated, and at the end, fell to darkness."Jeanne Alter's assault on France verges on success, but one obstacle remains.





	The Merciless One

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Craft Essence [of the same name](https://grandorder.wiki/The_Merciless_One).

Triumph. Was that permitted in all this devastation? Could the utter annihilation of France and its people be considered a triumph? Jeanne, as much as that was and wasn’t her name, knows that Gilles will say that it can. That it is a just revenge on the nation that had betrayed her. But the knight who stands before her now is also Gilles de Rais, and he raises his standard for France. And with his forces retreating, and his meagre mortal strength, he will die for it. She can see herself burning in the dark of his irises. In one hand, he holds her old flag, snapping in the breeze, grey with ash. The wyverns and dragons under her command have scorched the French and their cannons, but he remains to face her, clutching a remnant of who she used to be. Vanquished, too, and gone. The Master from another world was ripped apart by her Gilles’ conjured horrors, and nearly all the Servants contracted with them had surrendered or perished.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he tells her. Clever, but unsubtle as he is, she knows he is playing for time. Noble, but ultimately meaningless. Even if she pauses here, Fafnir will make a feast of the Baron’s scattered forces by sundown. No one will save them. Just as no one will save this brave, foolish knight who has decided to go out fighting. The French retreat has taken them back to an old battlefield, roughly made crosses strewn over it to mark the many dead. A meaningless gesture, for soon they’d all lie in ashes. The Dragon Witch smiles.  
  
“It doesn’t? Will you accept my surrender, Baron de Rais?” She’ll entertain him. Later, she will ask her Gilles how he had ever once been this one, but first she must put him down. She raises her bloody blade and points it at his chest. “I will never forgive this place, these people, for what they did to me,” she swears.  
  
“We failed you,” Gilles admits at once, even as he begins to circle. He knows that she will strike at him. She knows that even if he manages to parry, her strength will overwhelm him. He is no Heroic Spirit. Not yet. Never, in this world. Her Gilles has come from the very end of time to give her the revenge she craves. To burn these lands so black that no one will be able to imagine that there had once been life here. This man is just a figment, and he will not stand in the way of her vengeance.  
  
“Then this is what you deserve!” she roars, shattering his blade when he raises it to turn hers aside. His breastplate sparks as her sword glances off of it. His next parry, he makes with the standard, a flash of rippling cloth obscuring her target for the few seconds it takes her to savagely rip her way through. Anyone else would not have lived to see a second exchange of blows, but Gilles braces himself for a third. He throws the standard aside, tattered now and of no use to him; it’s too heavy for him to react as quickly as he needs to. Without it, he will still be utterly unable to keep up. He’s already breathing hard, worn down from many days of difficult fighting. She would pity him, if there was room left in her heart for such things.  
  
“I know this isn’t who you are, Jeanne!” The entreaty is heartfelt, or desperate. Both of those things, perhaps. “It isn’t too late to stop this.”  
  
“You don’t get to tell me who I am,” she hisses. “I decide that. Just like I get to decide what I want from now on. And there is nothing I want more than to see this place in ashes. Even if you and all your men surrendered, I would have Fafnir melt the flesh from your bones. Do you understand?”  
  
She can almost see the shattering inside Gilles de Rais, and this time he attacks before she can, a blur of silver and white. Formidable, but alas, only human. No matter how fast, how skilled he is, he will never outpace a Servant. His feint is as transparent as the path of his blade—a slash, meant to cleave across her breastplate—as simply as if he were moving at only a fraction of his speed. If not for his pluck, and the fact that a hit might have dented in the armored plate protecting her middle to cut off her air, it would be insulting. She disengages, and makes a languid riposte. The flat of her blade catches Gilles in the temple, and he stumbles, dropping onto one knee. Remarkable that he did not fall unconscious on the spot. The sight of him kneeling thrills her, and she takes her time pressing the advantage, mindful to keep on his left side. His sword is broken, but there’s no need to risk feeling its edge.  
  
“Gilles,” she calls, almost as sweetly as she must have done before they burned her. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough for this miserable land?”  
  
When he lifts his arm to defend himself—or had it been to reach for her?—she runs him through. His body spasms, instinctively arching away from the blade as she drives it in beneath his arm, where his armour cannot protect him. He barely makes a sound until the blackened steel comes free; she’s overdone it a little, and needs to brace against his shoulder to get it out again. That’s his own fault for making her so angry. Gilles whimpers at the weight of her hand, blood soaking into the white of his gambeson. His collapse happens slowly, and without thinking, Jeanne eases him into her lap. They can sit together for a little while, she decides, now that it’s over. He’s pretty like this, despairing and in agony. It almost makes her wish she could keep him. But he’s irreparably broken, now, a plaything thrown carelessly aside.  
  
“Don’t say anything,” she snaps, when she hears him whisper her name. “I almost certainly pierced your lung.” He should just give up and let death take him, but he clings to life and all its trappings. He’ll just be nothing, after all, once he breathes his last. She isn’t sure what makes her support his head, thumbing gently through his hair. He barely resembles her Gilles, but their eyes are the same, rapturous and so dark. Perhaps that’s it. Pathetic and desolate as he is, she likes the way he looks at her. Like he’s grateful that her face will be the last thing he sees. Softly, he chokes out her name again, and she wants nothing more than to clamp her hand over his nose and mouth and suffocate him. She stretches out a hand to do it, but then he smiles at her, careless as if he’s on the verge of sleep.  
  
“There’s still mercy in you,” he gasps, fighting for every word. “I can see—”  
  
“Shut up!” she barks, and wraps her hand around his throat rather than touch his face. She doesn’t squeeze. It wouldn’t be hard to finish him off, but that would be too kind. She decides to let him suffer here in her arms a little longer. A fit of coughing shakes him until he wheezes for his next agonizing breath, and still, that fool, he tries to speak.  
  
“You’ve spared me,” he says, tears welling in his eyes. She’s seen her Gilles cry like that. No sobs, just quiet tears that he scrubbed away the moment he noticed her watching him. This Gilles does no such thing. Too weak, too busy wasting his breath in a bid to convince her that she could be merciful, when she had already set fire to their entire nation. It seems impossible that he should be anything but outraged, but his gaze is gentle. “I will never do the horrible things that he did. Jeanne…” He lifts a hand, but she won’t let him touch, and he dies still reaching. It isn’t the same as when a Servant perishes, drifting away in a shower of golden sparks. Instead he sags against her, his head tipped back, eyes open in apparent observance of the sky. Only a husk, now, stinking of blood and sweat and filth. What an ugly thing, this is.  
  
It shouldn’t trouble her any, but his stillness in her arms is sickening, somehow. The Dragon Witch smooths Gilles’ eyelids down, puts a stop to his empty gazing. She can’t stop looking at his face. By rights, she should push the body out of her lap and move on—he won’t mind being left, anymore—but she stays until he’s cold. It’s almost finished, whether she stands or not. Now that he’s quiet, she almost wishes he’d say something. Another final appeal to the better nature that had died the day they’d burned her. He would have fallen into the darkness, too, drowning in the very same hatred that has made her what she is. He’d known, it seems, what kind of monstrosity he could become without her. Instead he’d perished still believing she could save them. Instead, she’ll burn the world to prove him wrong. There has never been any turning back. This is their new destiny. And so at last, she leaves the baron where he fell, and lets her shadow stretch over this kindling world until only the darkness remains.


End file.
